This now serves as a blog to collect some of the comments I make on other blogs related to management improvement (Deming, lean thinking, six sigma, leadership, systems thinking, respect for people...).

Monday, August 09, 2010

Lean Six Sigma Health Care Sucess

There’s a lot covered in the article – celebrating successes, communicating, and building on your successes. They also share a huge success in reducing waiting times for MRIs (from 25 to 28 days to just 3).

Great example. Senior leadership support and understanding is incredibly helpful. You can make progress without it. But eventually it becomes very difficult to work on the system without senior leadership support.

This example is also nice in showing that lean six sigma can work. So often organizations using the buzzwords don't have success. And it helps show different organizations can take different tactics. Many people don't like having a separate "improvement" office - as it can be seen to isolate it from everyday work. I think a separate, small, office, can help push improvement (especially in the first few years).

2 Comments:

Excellent examples of how excess labor can be used to strengthen processes and deliver more value to customers.Why don't more companies see the value in this? I believe it's because of silo thinking and optimizing the silos instead of looking across the entire value strea. Thoughts? lean six sigma

Great description of "respect for humanity." Remember also, even if your core strategy isn't necessarily focused on growth, the focus on delivering greater value for you customer will bring growth.When a business out performs their competitors the growth comes. In the meantime use the opportunity to invest even more in your greatest asset, people.lean six sigma